Anne Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book"
Anne Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book"It is hard to sympathize with a person when you have no idea where he or she is coming from or what they are going through. Similar experiences allow us to extend our sincere appreciation and understanding for another human being's situations and trials of life. Anne Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book" expresses the emotions that Bradstreet felt when her most intimate thoughts were published to the world without her consent. In this poem, Anne Bradstreet uses the conceit of the relationship between mother and child, a common situation that many people can sympathize with and understand.The average person would not see the cause for distress that Bradstreet feels in this situation. She had written a collection of poetry of personal reflection and did not intend to share these poems with anyone else. Many people would wonder why she would be disturbed about these works being printed when they had brought many people pleasurable reading and had brought Bradstreet herself much personal fame. Therefore, Bradstreet cannot just write a straightforward poem to tell how she feels about her stolen thoughts. Unless the reader happens to be a writer, he or she would not be able to sympathize wi
In this same manner, Bradstreet does not feel shame because she made mistakes, because everyone makes mistakes, but instead because the mistakes in her works were made public so that "all may judge" (line 6). There will always be some flaws, but a mother's love overlooks these imperfections. Bradstreet's works would probably never have been published had it not been for her brother-in-law. The intense emotion in this poem shows how seriously she took her writing and how much it meant to her. It is because of this strong devotion and commitment to her writing that her poetry is considered so superb and is still reverenced today. She gives the work many human characteristics to enhance the effect of the conceit. She feels a sense of shame, just like a mother would feel shame for her child who has misbehaved or a child whose mother has not had proper time to train them in the correct way to behave. She compares her work to a child clothed in "rags" (line 5). As Rosamond Rosenmeier acknowledges in Anne Bradstreet Revisited, the term child includes "an implied or stated standard of maturity or fulfillment that is not yet reached" (41). By using this extended metaphor, Bradstreet is able to reveal the way she feels about her work in a way that people other that writers can relate to. Instead, Bradstreet had to use a situation in which her readers could comprehend the many emotions she experienced. Bradstreet gives the poem a "face", "blemishes", "joints" and "feet" (lines 11, 12, 15), the same physical features as a child. No doubt, many women read her poetry, and the majority of women during that time were, or would one day be mothers.
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